A. Field of the Invention
Metal (usually copper or gilding metal) jacketed bullets are extensively used for high velocity handgun and rifle shooting. This protective jacket is much harder and stronger than the heavy lead alloy bullet core, but much softer than a gun's steel barrel. This yields high performance potential without excessive barrel wear. The Bullet Plating Carousel is used to apply protective jackets (usually copper) to cast or swaged lead alloy bullet cores.
B. Description of Prior Art
Plain, uncoated lead alloy bullets are used extensively in low velocity shooting applications. But as velocity requirements increase, so do problems with plain lead alloy bullets. To eliminate bullet deformation and lead fouling in gun barrels, and the inaccuracy in shooting that results, some type of protective coating on a lead alloy bullet is desirable. This protective coating has taken the form of lubricants, lacquers, paper patching, cloth patching, plastic jacketing and various types of metal jacketing. Nowadays, most bullet jackets are drawn copper or gilding metal, assembled to their lead cores by swaging. Electroplating is used to some extent by commercial ammunition factories in low performance applications such as 0.22 rimfire bullets, and copper plated shotgun pellets. These coatings are applied to large quantities of projectiles by the barrel plating process. The Bullet Plating Carousel is the easiest, safest, most economical system to use for applying precision, high performance jackets to small batches of cast or swaged lead alloy bullet cores in a non-industrial setting.